Hope Through Overwhelming Firepower Interlude 16 Scion/6.9
"You sure everything's alright, Taylor?" Her father questioned worriedly.
"Yes, Dad." Taylor huffed exasperatedly. He actually seemed more worried about her the more powerful she got. "Eidolon was just here to talk; ask a few questions about me and my powers. Considering the past few hours, is that honestly all that unexpected?"
"...I guess not." He admitted after a moment of hesitation. "I suppose I'm just looking for something to worry about. When most fathers have their daughters go out alone, they worry about who they may encounter. When my daughter goes out alone, I worry for who she encounters."
"Gee thanks, Dad." Taylor paused. "Although, considering what happened to the ABB..."
"Ah..." He trailed off. "...What exactly happened there? I mean, I've heard rumors and all-"
"Stuff." Taylor cut him off. "Stuff I'll explain to you a bit later, there's a few rather pressing engagements I need to deal with fairly soon. Like the press, and a few things Eidolon mentioned." If Scion really was an omnicidal entity it was better to get forewarning than have it come as a surprise, and Cauldron as a whole was probably better dealt with sooner rather than later.
"Oh, alright."
An awkward silence hung for a moment.
"Well, I'll be going then." Taylor spoke, as she stood up from the chair she had briefly settled into.
Her father nodded without further comment.
A moments' walk through the living room, and Taylor stepped outside the door.
She looked into the sky above her. Scion was probably the most pressing issue.
A moment's thought, and her internal singularities began to rumble to a start. Just enough energy pumped into the scanning systems to cover the entirety of earth.
Scion, currently traversing the Atlantic Ocean.
Right, let's do this properly now. She brought up the outfit of Buster Machine Number Seven.
Two separate equations ran through her head. One bent space before her inward; the other bent the space behind her outward.
The physical cancelers came online, a red glow suffused her as causality was pacified and conservation of energy was convinced to look the other way – wouldn't do for the sonic boom of her travel to wipe out life on earth, would it?
The preparations for her travel made, Taylor relaxed and let the repercussions of her actions take effect.
Her body began to slide forward through the air, the bent mass of the space before and behind her creating the effect of a boulder rolling downhill through space and time. Air molecules before her snapped with shocking force to the side of her path, before slowing to sluggishness and smoothly settling into a more normal energetic state.
A few in-flight modifications to the equations running through her head later and she found herself before Scion. She rapidly rebuilt both equations from the ground up in order for her to settle into a hovering state before him.
The entire process from start to finish had taken only a minuscule fraction of a second.
The golden man stopped his movement.
The entity came to a stop before the female-shaped void.
The replication of human sight the entity possessed in its extension observed a human female, only notable for her unusual outfit and the fact that she was flying amidst a red glow, but all other senses the entity possessed failed to notice anything other than a void where she existed.
The female began speaking.
She floated there without noticeable outside aid of any kind; no shard maintained her flight pattern. Echoes in reality of what might have been a connection to a shard at one point stretched out into a cluster of worlds drained bare of their resources at a far faster rate than they ever should have been.
Interest.
"-ght. If this isn't going to work." The female continued speaking. "I'm coming in." She moved up to the entity's body, and pressed a hand to its chest.
A small void appeared in the center of the entity's false body, and rapidly exploded outward into a gravatic anomaly, or black hole as the humans called it, which consumed the entity's false body.
The black hole intensified and bent at an angle perpendicular to the dimension the female resided in. A torrent of gravity ripped a hole between and the human female shaped void stepped through to observe the truth of the entity's existence.
Shock.
"Probably not Earth native, no." The void spoke.
The void understood the entity did not belong here. The entity reached for the cluster of shards which foretold the future.
A void lied there as well. No future could have given rise to the one the entity now resided in, and any future to come could not account for the void. The perfect analyzation of those shards, which could account and form a prediction for every conceivable variable, had come across a variable it could not conceive of.
Panic.
No answers would be forthcoming from any shard the entity possessed. No tool or ability under its domain gave a satisfactory resolution to this dilemma.
"Do you even understand anything I'm saying?!" The void cried out.
With no recourse laying within any source at entities disposal, the entity lashed out in an attempt to banish the void from its realm.
Taylor blinked as her attempts at communication were finally met with a response – a shot of blinding gold light that struck with the force of a hurricane.
"How rude." Taylor commented as the light washed over her body to no effect. "You know, this isn't really helping my point of view on whether or not you're an enemy of humanity."
Her only answer was a storm of attacks, equaled only in their variation by their intensity.
Waves which disrupted molecular bonds, a string of light that carried enough mass to make the moon look small, a beam of black energy that simultaneously raised and lowered the temperature of all it touched resulting in atoms tearing themselves apart in confused fury.
All fell before the modified Eltreum alloy that was her skin, immutable to all phenomenon short of whatever the hell the Excelion Variable Gravity Well was using.
"Well if that's how you want to play..." She raised a hand into the air, all singularities spinning at full power, and unleashed a titanic beam of energy into Scion's true form. Enough power put out each second to exceed the sun.
A gridlock of energy, arranged in such a way that each preceding layer of energy reinforced all the others to create an incredibly efficient defense system for the energy inputted, formed before the blast.
Taylor absently noted that Alexandria's own invulnerability was based upon the same process.
Still, despite the incredible efficiency, the shield buckled under the incredible force behind Taylor's attack.
Taylor put a bit more power behind the attack, and the field of energy shattered.
Another, larger one fell into place after.
Taylor frowned. She still had a while before she ran out of power from her singularities to enhance the attack with, but that was a bit more inefficient than she was happy with. The typical Buster Corp tactical doctrine-
She blinked again, and sighed. "Now I just feel silly." This wasn't a space monster she was facing; the typical Buster Corp tactical doctrine applied little if at all. Since she wasn't facing a space monster here, Scion didn't have any of the 'hardiness' of physics inherited through the Heart of the Universe all Space Monsters had. "Which means..." She smirked.
She mentally flipped a switch, and everything within a five kilometer sphere – the maximum area of effect for her physical cancelers – vanished as the laws of physics were turned off.
The void that was a female human suddenly ceased her attack, and swept up and outwards to form a vastly larger void, this one unfathomable to any senses the entity possessed – even the human sight it grafted onto its body.
The void moved onward, passing through all the defenses the entity set up as if they weren't even there. Air rushed behind the void to fill the wake left by its passage as it pressed into the body of the entity.
A few moments of the entity feeling portions of existence vanish into that infinite darkness, and the void collapsed inward to form the human female shape again.
The void began to speak once more.
Fear.
What manner of being did the entity face? What possible existence could be such a void to all things, and control it so effectively as well.
Fear and desperation having driven it to new realms, the entity drove forth a thousand years of life from its body and burned.
Taylor almost stumbled, not from the force but from surprise, as a wave of light expanded outward from Scion's body. Temperature the equal of the sun at its greatest moment issued forth from the body of Scion and the otherwise uninhabited world they resided on melted into slag and burnt atmosphere.
Taylor attempted to speak again, only to realize there was nothing for the sound to transmit through.
Well, there went the only form of communication they might share – although Taylor was beginning to question that.
Taylor was honestly beginning to question how much more effort she was willing to put into attempting to communicate with Scion. Many would argue that he had already demonstrated sufficient impetus for her to kill him.
But she supposed years of saving people had earned him at least one last effort.
Resolving on a course of action, Taylor brought her physical canceler directly online once more.
Space around her was rewritten, and dozens of singularities formed into existence around her, a grinding mass of incredible gravities formed several powerful degeneracy reactors – she was going to need a lot of energy for this.
Her sensor systems drew energy from the degeneracy reactors around her, and expanded outward. And outward. And outwards. Spanning millions of light years.
A suitable location was found.
A dozen more reactors were formed, as Taylor's scanning system drew forth enough energy to put a thousand supernovas to shame.
And those scans deepened. Until Taylor could completely understand everything within the massive multi-million light year radius her sensors covered.
The requisite amount of information at her disposal, Taylor began constructing a new equation. All the small idiosyncrasies of the two areas of space she had in mind were fed into the equation.
The equation built, Taylor funneled it though another one designed to convince reality these two areas of space should really be in the place the other is.
Math took effect.
In a flash of light, and a rain of shattered space time, Taylor drug Scion and herself across reality on a cross-galactic Warp.
The entity finally understood things.
If there was any form of communication the entity understood, it was energy and power.
Human speech was something the entity always had to remind itself to pay attention to, but power was something instinctively grasped.
And such energy.
The void wielded energy and power in volumes, depths and to effects the entity could never imagine possible. To perform an instantaneous trans-location across so an incredible gulf of space, would require energy and abilities the entity could not grasp.
The entity finally understood things.
Resignation.
The void was not a foe the entity could defeat. There was nothing to be done but await whatever judgment it issued.
The void began to speak once more. "Are you willing to talk now?"
The entity processed the voids words. To talk? As humans did? How demeaning. But, if it was their only form of common communication...
The entity struggled to fit its thoughts into forms and manners suitable for human speech.
It began to vibrate the air.
Taylor held out some hope that the show of power involved in dragging the both of them to Andromeda would get him to stop attacking long enough for some sort of communication to start.
Suddenly, a huge voice boomed across the Earth-like planet Taylor had found.
"I... will... talk." The voice slowly stuttered out, as if unsure of its wording.
Taylor grinned. "Wonderful."